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Passengers on 2001 Air Transat Flight Provide Insights About Post-Traumatic Stress Vulnerability
A study of memory and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a group of Air Transat passengers who experienced 30 minutes of terror over the Atlantic Ocean in 2001 sheds light on a potential risk factor that could help predict who is most vulnerable to PTSD The study findings, to be published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicate that PTSD may be linked with how a person processes memory for details of events in general, rather than memory specifically related to traumatic events.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Young Children Bet on Their Numerical Skills: Metacognition in the Numerical Domain Vy A. Vo, Rosa Li, Nate Kornell, Alexandre Pouget, and Jessica F. Cantlon Although metacognition has been identified as an important factor in learning, it is still unclear how this skill emerges and develops in early childhood. Children 5 to 8 years old completed a number-discrimination task and an emotion-discrimination task. After each comparison, the children indicated the confidence they had in their answer.
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Seeing More Blacks in Prison Increases Support for Policies that Exacerbate Inequality
Informing the public about African Americans’ disproportionate incarceration rate may actually bolster support for punitive policies that perpetuate inequality, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Stanford University psychology researchers Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt found that White participants who were exposed to higher racial disparities in incarceration rates reported being more afraid of crime and more likely to support the kinds of punitive policies that exacerbate these racial disparities.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Are Orchids Left and Dandelions Right? Frontal Brain Activation Asymmetry and Its Sensitivity to Developmental Context Paz Fortier, Ryan J. Van Lieshout, Jordana A. Waxman, Michael H. Boyle, Saroj Saigal, and Louis A. Schmidt Does frontal asymmetry moderate the relationship between early birth environment and adult behavioral outcomes? Adults who had been of low or normal birth weight were assessed for resting EEG alpha asymmetry when they were between 22 and 26 years of age, and they completed behavioral self-report measures when they were between 30 and 35 years of age.
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Research Reveals Pervasive Implicit Hierarchies for Race, Religion, and Age
As much as social equality is advocated in the United States, a new study suggests that besides evaluating their own race and religion most favorably, people share implicit hierarchies for racial, religious, and age groups that may be different from their conscious, explicit attitudes and values. The study findings appear in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “People from relatively low-status groups can readily report that their group does not have the most power. At the same time, most groups, even if they have less social power, favor their own group above all others,” explains psychological scientist Jordan R.
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Preschoolers With Special Needs Benefit From Peers’ Strong Language Skills
The guiding philosophy for educating children with disabilities has been to integrate them as much as possible into a normal classroom environment, with the hope that peers’ skills will help bring them up to speed. A new study provides empirical evidence that peers really can have an impact on a child’s language abilities, for better or worse. While peers with strong language skills can help boost their classmates’ abilities, being surrounded by peers with weak skills may hinder kids’ language development. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
